His jaw shifted a fraction. Not anger. Math.
“You are asking for trust you have not earned,” he said.
“I am offering results you cannot buy,” I said. “We both have bosses. Mine wears a crown. Yours wears a city. Neither of them needs a signature to make this work. They need outcomes.”
He looked past me to the square, then back. “Terms.”
“I call you twice a week,” I said. “Or sooner if it burns. You get everything useful I hear. You keep my name off every form. If you need something on paper to satisfy an audit, you write ‘confidential source’ and leave it there. If I contaminate a scene, you arrest me. If a civilian dies because I decided to be cinema, you arrest me and I will not ask you for a coat.”
“And if you lie.”
“You said it already,” I said. “You put me on the floor and you do not apologize.”
He held my eyes until the roof and the river and the square fell away and it was just us and the breath between us. Then he nodded once. Not capitulation. An acceptance of physics.
“Verbal compact,” he said. “You will be useful. I will be merciless if you are not.”
“Agreed.”
Everything I do has a cost. Tonight the bill came due in ink instead of blood. It would not always.
23
INFILTRATE
VIKTOR
Four cells. All connected. All funded by someone with palace access and a taste for chaos.
My comm crackled. Noah's voice filtered through, calm and clinical despite the hour. “Coordinates uploading now. Data center is in Southwark. Old industrial complex. Officially decommissioned in 2019.”
“Officially,” I repeated.
“Right. Unofficially, power consumption spiked six months ago. Someone's running servers. A lot of them.”
I pulled up the building schematics on my tablet. Five floors. Basement access. Multiple entry points, all covered by security systems that predated modern encryption standards by a decade.
Sloppy. Or arrogant.
“Security?” I asked.
“Private contractor. Ex-military. I'm reading eight heat signatures on the ground floor. Could be more in the basement where the servers are housed.” Noah's keyboard clicked in the background. “I'll be in your ear the whole time. Real-time updates on patrol routes and camera feeds.”
“You are too good at this.”
“Adrian's a thorough teacher.” A pause. “Try not to get shot. He gets cranky when I have to patch up his people.”
“Will try my best.”
The door opened behind me. I didn't need to turn around to know it was him. Could feel Sebastian's presence the way you feel a storm rolling in. Electric. Inevitable.
“Ready?” he asked.
I looked at him. Black tactical gear that clung to lean muscle. Hood pulled up, hiding gold hair that would catch light too easily. Bow slung across his back, quiver strapped to his thigh. He looked like death had taught him how to dress.
Beautiful. Dangerous. Mine.
He crossed the room, each step purposeful, predatory. When he reached me, his hand found my jaw, tilted my face up. His thumb brushed my cheekbone.
